After choosing prospects for homeopathy?

After the general election: What are the perspectives for homeopathy??

09/27/2013

Germany has voted and the parties are looking for a possible government coalition. One thing is certain: the FDP will no longer be represented in the new Bundestag, the Ministry of Health under Daniel Bahr is history. But who will take over this ministry, how will the gaps between the civil security system and the existing system be bridged and what is the perspective of homeopathy in the newly constituted German Bundestag?

Plan A: Great Coalition
Looking back at the time of the last black-red coalition between 2005 and 2009, the SPD and Ulla Schmidt occupied the health department. Does that mean the new Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach? The health economist is significantly involved in the SPD concept of the civil insurance and in the summer of 2010 triggered an intensive debate on the benefits and costs of homeopathy. „You should simply forbid the funds to pay for homeopathy“, said Lauterbach in his function as SPD chairman in the health committee of the Bundestag the SPIEGEL. With this advance in the summer hole Lauterbach wanted the health system
resulting from the financial misery. He was calculated by the German Central Association of Homeopathic Doctors (DZVhÄ) that the expenses for medical homeopathy compared to the total cost of the system were in the per thousand range. The economist remained with his attitude, which, however, was not supported by the SPD parliamentary group. „Mr. Lauterbach represents a single opinion“, Carola Reimann, SPD, chairman of the Bundestag health committee, made it clear.

Election statements of the SPD and CDU parliamentary group
Before the election, the Bundestag factions gave the DZVhÄ interviews. If the Social Democrats become junior partners of a grand coalition, the SPD Group will push for more research in the field of homeopathy, said Hilde Mattheis, „this should also be promoted through public funds“. Mattheis also wants to work for the selective contracts in the new legislature, she „are an instrument for the competition of health insurance companies among themselves“.

Jens Spahn, CDU / CSU parliamentary group, said in the DZVhÄ interview that the CDU „always for the free choice of doctors and for freedom of therapy of doctors“ uses, „and will continue to do so“. Spahn emphasized that his faction has always attached great importance to natural remedies and naturopathic medicine, „that the special therapy directions were not completely excluded from the benefits catalog of the statutory health insurance.“

Plan B: Black-Green Coalition
This coalition is politically unrealistic, but mathematically possible. The Greens have been making a strong commitment for many years, „Complementary medicine (including homeopathy) is perceived as having a non-ideological potential“, said Biggi Bender in an interview. „A strict rejection of homeopathy is just as unhelpful as (also coming from complementary medicine) allegations that it escapes through its individual approach of a systematic evaluation. For this reason, we are committed to expanding public research into complementary medicine, since it is often found helpful by the chronically ill, whom conventional medicine has not helped“, so Bender. Biggi Bender did not make it to parliament. She was defeated as a direct candidate in the constituency of Stuttgart II and could not secure a seat in the German Bundestag on the state list Baden-Württemberg. All election interviews can be found at: www.dzvhae-homoeopathie-blog.de (association of homeopathic physicians)

Picture: Ulrich Schmitz